River of Secrets by Roger Johns

Author:Roger Johns
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2018-08-28T07:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

Wallace left the building after her meeting with Chief Shannon. She needed a place to think and organize what she had discovered so far. She sat in her car, raking through Marioneaux’s past one more time, trying to fit everything she knew into the basic framework of means, motive, and opportunity.

Means was not an issue. Someone had tightened a slip lock around the victim’s neck. No special skill was required to accomplish that.

And while the list of people she thought of as having an opportunity was short, the fact was, any one of an unlimited number of people could have killed Marioneaux, people who had simply not yet shown up on her radar.

It was the same with motive. In a broad sense, Marioneaux had probably pissed off enough people in his life that the universe of possible killers was practically infinite—an essentially meaningless state of affairs.

She started over, going back through her notes on the history between Eddie and Herbert. While it was true that they had spewed a lot of venom at each other over the years, in some strange way each man seemed to need the other. Each functioned as a springboard from which the other was able to launch himself and his mission into the public consciousness.

She turned to her notes on Glenn, but after a few minutes she found her attention refocusing on Eddie. His situation was different, if only because it was noisier.

With Glenn, it looked like a need for reconciliation balanced against a possibility of revenge, with a slightly shaky alibi thrown into the mix.

But with Eddie, a lot of elements were in play. The DNA, the unconfirmed sighting in Spanish Town the night of the murder, the insulation fibers, and the attic exit all rested on one side of the balance. The discovery of an alibi witness and his increasingly peculiar disappearance, along with the possibility of a leak, all weighed heavily on the other side.

She closed her eyes and leaned her seat back, squirming around until she found a position that didn’t aggravate the pain in her side, and then let the newspaper version of Eddie Pitkin’s life play out in her head.

When she stopped trying to filter his life through the question of why he might have killed Herbert Marioneaux, the opening she had been searching for revealed itself. It had been with her all along. She had been asking the wrong question. It wasn’t why would Eddie kill Herbert, but why would Eddie kill anyone?

She reached for the ignition.

* * *

Wallace pulled into the little parking lot that ran along the side of Davis McCone’s law office. It was a solo practice housed in a beautiful Hays Town building that dated from the architect’s reclaimed-brick and large-pane-window period. She jogged up the front steps, the ache in her side reminding her she still hadn’t told Mason about the attack.

Barbara Seeley, Davis’s forever secretary, greeted her as she entered the reception area.

“Hi, Wallace. What a nice surprise.”

“Do you think he has a minute to see me?” she asked after giving Barbara a quick hug.

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